Monday, 4 August 2014

Beautiful Tris singlefins

I hope you like Tris surfboards because heres a few more of them . This is another of the beautiful collaborations between Tris Cokes - shaper , Johnny Manetta - glasser and Neil Wernham (travelling surfer from New Zealand) - artist (c. 1974 / 75) . This board is in the collection of Tris surf shop. Neil's earlier Tris artworks were made using spray cans and masking tape to build up the painting in a labourious but very striking way ; and then he bought an airbrush ( which he still has today) and was able to try a mixture of freehand and masked areas. The freehand stuff is a lot softer on the edges , and was faster to do so allowed Neil's creativity to flow.
Judging by some of Neil's artworks - which were pretty far out and trippy , the local surf crew were pretty experimental in their substance intake. This painting is quite strange too - the top half is beautiful and flooded with warm light, colourful butterflies and perfect waves / compared with the bottom half which seems to show the downs of drug use , a weird looking merman looking a bit unhappy, smoking from a bong and sitting on giant mushrooms. There is a real narrative to this spray , its not just decoration to make the board look pretty. This is why Neil's art is held in such high regard.
The shape of the board is very similar to others with Wernham sprays of the period , small swallow tail , glassed in wooden fin , and unusual rounded nose which Tris favoured at the time .

The deck of the board has an owl spray , apparently because it was made for someone called Owl. The detailing and pinlines around the artworks are great quality too . Unfortunately I didnt take a photo of the whole of the deck .

Johnny Manetta with Tris and Jolly Good boards, around 1975 . The Jolly Good's have artwork by Nancy Dinmore and the Tris by Neil.

Above - Johnny and a Tris

Here's another lovely Tris, which has recently come to light from South Wales . This is a great shape with the small swallow ,single flyers and very flat deck leading to more of a pointed nose with a bit of thickness to it.
The owner said when he bought it in the early 90s as an alternative to his little thrusters he was told that the artwork was of a secret spot near the Tris factory .
The spray is again by Neil Wernham and I'm positive the 'secret spot' is Chapelporth . There is no freehand airbrushing here , its all done with masking tape building up the edges of the cliffs , the hills and even the lines in the wave faces. Its a time consuming and beautiful piece of work , and Johnny the glasser has playfully cut up the logo to peep over the horizon , and has cut out the little surfer and put him on the Chapelporth wave. So the painting becomes the logo and vice versa - classic.

This is an alternative artwork by Keith Flack with changes from the standard Tris logo . Ganja leaves , the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland smoking his pipe, and a map of Cornwall and Fance in the top right corner . Tris had a small factory and shop in Fance in the 70s - I'll go into more detail on this when I have a chat with Johnny again.

Johnny's personal board next to the sign of the original Tris factory , taken around '73

Testing water flow over the channels of a very unusual Tris bonzer , with the help of Mick Harlot (flying fish surfboards ). Does this board still exist ??

Another Wernham owned by Alex . This was when Tris was using the In Natural Flow logo. Neil's earlier works seem to be more landscapes of mabye recogniseable places , and this could be Chapel again ? There is a definite interest in mushrooms and mabye the magic within them. This is another great piece of work , and nice to see it when it was brand new below.

I have just noticed that this board is on the far left of this picture !